Partners in Crime
by Paladin of Farore
Summary: It was a harrowing decision for Kitty, to go with Logan. Her power let her phase through time, forming her body anew five decades in the past. It means leaving everything she knows behind, the history she knew, the boyfriend she loved, and friends who would now never know her. Not like before. But Logan needed her, the past had to be changed, and who better to do it than Shadowcat?
1. Decisions

Kitty had spent almost nine whole hours contemplating her decision. That was all the time the other's could promise for. Isolated as the mountain temple was, it was only a matter of time before the Sentinels found them. They always did, and when they came, fire and death rained from above.

Her allotted time had been spent curled up on the low bunk she shared with Bobby, knees up to her chest, eyes staring blankly into the distance as her brain struggled to process the magnitude of the situation. Most nights, she ended up phasing, glitching through Bobby like a low poly model in an ancient video game. That made her immune to his naturally cold skin, but she disliked the lack of contact.

She missed video games. Saturday nights had been full of them when the team had still called the mansion in Westchester home

That was a long time ago. Games didn't matter anymore. Whether they be pixilated battles between cartoon plumbers and giant turtle monsters or danger room simulations preparing young mutants for combat. It was all irrelevant.

Funny how giant shapeshifting robots hunting your race to the brink of extinction changed your perspective on life. Danger room sessions had done little to train them for constant running, crisscrossing across the globe in search of any safe haven not yet reduced to a pile of ash, charred bones and luminescent concentration camps filled with branded prisoners.

It hadn't prepared them to watch friend after friend die while they watched helplessly, only to flee when their inability to challenge the scaly monstrosities became clear.

Kitty's perspective was unique from the others. It had been ever since her secondary mutation had kicked in, coming as simultaneously a godsend to their ongoing cause, and a meat grinder for her psyche. Her initial power had been to phase through solid matter, resulting in her going to sleep one night only to wake up as she slammed her back on the living room floor downstairs.

Her second power had been to phase the mind through time. And all the borderline nonsensical baggage that came with it.

That was something she hadn't spoken of to the others in detail. Not even the Professor, though he had to know of course, being the king of all telepaths and all.

Each time someone made a jump back in time, usually Bishop, she retained bits and pieces from the old timeline. They would come rushing back to her at random times, pulses of blue light and shadowy forms of dying friends as they were decimated. Muffled screams and the bright flashes of Sentinel face beams. Bobby's icy form being shattered by a molten hand.

Sometimes she even remembered entire conversations. The few moments of levity and laughter that took place before the slaughter.

Each time she sent someone back, she felt the muscle that was her power stretch. Like a blue double helix floating in a hazy white void of converging timelines and possibilities colliding together. Even as she felt that muscle strain with each use, she knew she could take it further. All the way.

She could fling herself downward into the abyss of time, that swirling double helix of blue, like cells undergoing mitosis, and manifest her form physically back in time.

Thus came her decision.

What part would she play in Magneto and the Professor's batshit plan?

She'd have to be a part of it either way. No one else had her power. But could she go all the way? Should she?

Logan had for her to be the one for her to send. The Professor's mind, powerful as it was, couldn't physically withstand the strain of the jump. So their resident regenerative quasi-immortal would have to due. He was alive back in the seventies, with a body ready for his mind to take control of.

Were she to go with him, she'd make a body of her own in the process.

Once the connection to the past was made, history would be changed unless she was killed in the process. A new timeline would be born with the only surviving memories of the old one residing with the time traveler, and with the woman who sent them.

So far the changes had been minutes. A few days or weeks.

This time, if the plan went off without a hitch, it would be fifty years of time rewritten. The plane had to go right. It had to, or they were all doomed to this cycle forever. Or until they were all dead, and mutants were finally extinct. Trask's work done in only a half century.

Yet, somehow, all of that would change if they could stop Mystique from becoming a murderer. Despite all Kitty had seen in the time she'd spent with the X-men, since she was thirteen to now at the age of twenty-four, it was still bafflingly hard to imagine, the cold, brutal sociopath that was Mystique as Charles Xavier's adoptive sister. Believe it or not, watching someone cartwheel from one elegant kill to the next in a bloody piece of performance art made it had to picture them as anything else.

But Kitty trusted the Professor, even though he'd proven he could be a jerk on more than one occasion.

She trusted the Professor, so she trusted his judgment when she said what she could do for this mission.

"Logan will need all the help he can get, Kitty," he'd told her earlier that same morning, before she'd cloistered herself away to decide. "If anbyone could get the job done alone, it's him. The lone wolf is a part he's played many a time. But you understand the flow of time better than most. You could guide him. Make the changes as their needed." His ancient, wrinkled face fell to the floor beneath his chair's wheels. "I know that I am asking more of you than I ever have, but please, Kitty, consider it. We need you."

The wizened old master of magnetism nodded from his friends side. There was nothing he could have added.

'More of you than I ever have'? That was an understatement.

They were asking everything of her.

Before, when she simply served as the time machine rather than the traveler, she got new memories. A new history her mind adapted to with just a sprinkling of alternatives thrown in.

In this case, she'd be left behind. A new players in history who'd age and grow old even as a new Kitty Pryde was born to the same parents with the same DNA. She'd be leaving behind her friends, her past….Bobby.

But then again, what choice was there?

Stay here and adapt to a new time with the others, and let Logan fail without her, or go, and perhaps ensure his success?

The answer was obvious.

Turning, she walked through three walls, and wrapped her slim arms around the figure she knew was waiting her.

Her lips pressed against a pair cool and icy.

"I'm going," she whispered.

**Thanks for reading, hope you enjoy what's to come. **

**Please, review. It's my motivation. Follows do nothing for me. I need my fix. **


	2. Falling

Kitty walked through the temple hallways hand in hand with Bobby, the flickering light of the several dozen hanging lanterns casting a red tinted light over their features.

The enormous front doors to the courtyard outside were open, though they wouldn't be for long. Ten minutes from now, those not necessary to the plan would take their stations outside. Sentinels would find them before long. They always did, their global networks were too powerful to evade for any significant matter of time. And this time Bishop wouldn't be making any jumps. No more second chances.

Along the hallways walls the last remnants of the X-men stood waiting for her with expressions that covered pretty much every possible level of stoicism. Storm's conjured fog rolled in from outside, coating them in shifting condensation, doing nothing to detract from the accepting resignation that shone in each of their eyes.

So few of them left

Kitty broken away from Bobby and paced to the center of the room and gazed around, her mind filling on all the missing faces.

Hank, with his cultured charm and heart to match his bestial strength.

Rogue, who'd come back to a fight she had every reason to abandon. Remy had gone with her, both of their lives ending in a bang that resulted in one of the few minor victories against the sentinels they'd ever had.

Mister Summers and Doctor Grey, gone for so long yet with a presence that still lingered.

And Kurt, who had faith enough for all of them. Kitty was Jewish, yet she'd still found a strange comfort in watching his prayers knelt before a candle with a rosary between his three fingered hands. That was something she still found hard to believe. How had such a gentle soul come from a mother so vicious? The Professor insisted that Mystique had been different in the past, kinder, compassionate. That the mission to the past could save her. She believed him, but she was a bit biased.

Seeing someone carve their way through enough human foot soldiers with brutal acrobatic rage tended to paint one's perception in a less that favorable light.

That perception in Kitty's words?

"Crazy bitch."

"So," she began. "This is it, huh?" Her eyes fell to the stone floor. Part of her wanted to cry. Though she _should _cry. Her last exchange with the people she loved, the last time she'd ever seen them in recognizable forms. Yet the finality of the decision blocked any tears. She couldn't bring herself to cry right now, and that made her want to cry even more.

"You guys probably know I haven't been thrilled about how we've been doing things recently," she continued, forcing herself forward. "I know why it had to be done, but I still hated feeling like a damsel who needed protecting. Me being the first to eat, first to sleep, always the priority. I get it, I was the lifeline, and much as I hated it, I appreciate all you've done." She smiled a little, meeting their eyes. "Mind doing it one more time while Logan and I retroactively kick the sentinel's asses?"

A series of smile alit on their faces.

Storm stepped forward, pulling her one time student into a hug.

"Do we really have to answer that?" her eyes were misted over slightly, contrasting with her mocha colored skin. She was keeping the weather outside just an inch away from breaking into a torrent of wind, rain, and lightning.

"Thanks, Ororo," Kitty whispered.

"Always, Kitty," she gave her student one last squeeze then turned towards the doors. "Make sure to keep Logan in check. He's more than competent, but things have a tendency to…blow up, whenever he enters the picture."

With that, she flew out into the courtyard, cape whipping behind her and thunder booming overhead.

One by one her friends stepped forward and said their goodbyes and gave their hugs. Now was the best time possible for hugs.

Roberto's hug tingled with heat in the same way Bobby's did with cold.

Clarice was on the verge of tears, pink colored skin nearly ethereal in the misty fog.

Colossus' arms were large as barrels, and for a brief moment Kitty was the fourteen year old with the crush on the twenty year old Russian guy.

Then it was just her and Bobby.

No more words were exchanged, just one last kiss, and a fleeting glance over his shoulder as he walked out to the courtyard.

Behind him the doors were sealed shut, fingers of ice crawling through the cracks as Iceman reinforced it. Left alone, Kitty turned and phased through the door to the inner sanctum. Her mind was on the mission. All else had to be either pushed to the back of her mind or temporarily forgotten. The way forward was clear, and dwelling could really get in the way. Work now, remember what was lost later.

The old men of the team were waiting for inside.

Seated in his floating chair, the Professor was gazing contemplatively at the multicolored crystals that made up the windowed panels of the chamber. Cobwebs crisscrossed over them, filling the chamber's sides and becoming more and more plentiful as the walls met to form the corners of the room. Magneto leaned nearby; the wrinkles of his face all the more evident in the dim light. He no longer wore a helmet anymore-being in telepathic communication with the rest of the team was imperative, and an X was stitched on the shoulder of his armor.

Oh how the times changed.

"You ready, kid?" Logan grunted from his seated position on the stone slab at the room's center, a cigar burning between his teeth.

"As I'll ever be," she smiled a bit. "How 'bout you, old man? Ready to rock the seventies? What were you up to back then, anyway?"

"Not a damn clue," he sounded irritated. A brow crawled up her forehead.

"Didn't you get most of your memories back?" She'd thought the professor had basically sorted that out for him with telepathic-magic-stuff.

"Yup, the ones I lost from Weapon-X. Chuck got me that back. The seventies….Christ, they were the seventies, kid. You'd be amazed what you could get on street corners back in the day."

"Say no more," she told him, mentally preparing herself to find his past body coked out in a gutter somewhere.

Logan took a long drag off the cigar before tossing aside, watching it break and burn out against the wall.

"Mind explaining all this to me?" he gestured to the makeshift stone bed. "Chuck explained your whole…time thing, but with you coming' with me-"

"It's different," she finished, taking a breath. God, this was complicated. "Yeah it is. When I jumped Bishop back, I stayed here as an anchor between past and present while he warned us about the Sentinel attacks. When the past was changed, Bishop would snap back to the present, with memories of the past he'd changed…..he watched everyone die a dozen times over."

"I've seen it," said the Professor, rolling forward. "It was…disconcerting to say the least."

Kitty nodded. Telepathically sharing the alternate pasts had been a big part of recent strategies.

"This time," she continued "with me going along, I won't have a body to anchor me back. I'll have to manifest one in the past. Theoretically, I should end up somewhere near you. Random proximity, that kind of thing. You'll go to sleep, and the energy I run through your mind will constitute the jump. When we change things, you might snap back to this time period. Not quite sure about that. Me, I don't come back. Whatever happens, I stay where I end up."

There was a prolonged silence-the three older men exchanging meaningful glances. Unspoken words shining in the silence.

"Alright then, kid," said Logan, a respectful quirk moving the edges of his lips.

"Our thanks can never be enough for this," the Professor edged closer, his age showing more than ever. A wistful look flashed over him. "Come here, my dear girl."

Falling down on one knee, Kitty took a pair of pale withered hands in hers. The tears almost came roaring forward at this point, sharing a final moment with the man who had become the father and confidant to her and so many others. Their minds melded briefly, snapshots of moments long past zipping by at incredible speed.

Their first meeting when her powers manifested. The half dozen times she'd found herself either mopy or crying during the hellish teenage years, curled up on the couch of his study for a good chat. A thousand other random moments and conversations, and their reunion after his miraculously return from the grave after the Phoenix debacle.

"You've come quite a long way, haven't you?" he whispered, brushing strands of hair off her cheeks. "A thousand battles, just as many losses. And now one last chance. You and Logan are among the best. Knowing you Kitty, our fate is in good hands."

"Thank you, Professor," she leaned in and pressed a kiss to his cheek. God, she did love the old jerk.

They embraced for a moment, then, finality sinking in, she pulled away and got back to business.

"Tell me what we have to do to stop Mystique."

"Go to my house and find me there. Convince me of," he waved a hand at their surroundings. "All of this."

"Can't you just read our minds?" input Logan. "See it all?"

A bald head shook sadly.

"I didn't have my powers in nineteen-seventy-three. Those were…dark time for me. Ask me when you get there. He'll be stubborn about it. I remember that clearly, but if you mention Raven, he may be more amiable."

Kitty nodded. Made sense. Baby Professor might budge if the kind-of-crazy-maybe-not-yet sister got brought up.

"You'll need me as well," spoke up Magneto , moving away from his place against a nearby pillar

"Will we?" she asked bluntly. "Weren't you still a player in the whole megalomaniacal terrorist game back then?" He was an incredibly powerful ally; one of the most powerful Alpha level mutants on the planet even before most of the species had been decimated. As close as you could get to Omega without actually reaching the god-like state usually unique to the likes of Jean Grey. That power and usefulness didn't change the past, though. The 1970 had been the early period of his days as evil mutant extraordinaire.

Being basically alright with present day reformed Magneto was far different than being cool with the militant old one.

Magneto nodded.

"It will take the two of us, side by side when we couldn't be further apart." His face took on what could only be despair. "I was the one who led Raven down this path, Katherine. Please, let me help pull her back. And perhaps, I could be pulled back as well. Hopefully quicker, this time around."

"This a second chance, Kitty," said the Professor. "For all of us."

She nodded.

"Fair enough," said Logan, voicing Kitty's own thoughts. "Ready to go?"

"Yep," was her simple reply. Now or never.

Logan lay back on the stone slab, looking obviously uncomfortable as the adamantium in his body ground against the hard surface. Walking around to his head, Kitty sat at the waiting chair, and raised her hands. Sweat beaded on her knuckles. Funny how her nerves only became apparent moments before the fact.

Ten heartbeats, that was how long the wait took.

Ten heartbeats plinked by, a fire ignited in her head, and a blue light shot from her hands.

Logan screamed, and the two old men watching the scene found themselves alone in a room with Logan, prone body shimmering with an aura of blue and white.

**LINEBREAK**

Kitty found herself falling.

Every atom of her body buzzed with a torrential frenzy, pulsing and screaming as her form plummeted through a void of blue and black and white. Lightning splintered around her twisting into an enormous double helix that crackled and fizzled. This was the nerve center of fall things, pumping with raw lifeblood of the universe. Kitty felt energy bombard her again and again.

Fragments of time, the past, her present, moments she'd lived through and some she hadn't, burned themselves into her being. Her eyes were aglow with power. As her momentum twisted her further and further down the double helix, she saw focal points in history become alight. Pinpricks of white like the readout screen of Cerebro.

It was the purest form of ecstasy. Being connected to all that was and would be, feeling the turn of the universe like her own beating heart.

Then she hit the pavement at roughly Mach two, sprawling out on the hard surface in a daze of pain and whiplash. Head spinning, she was vaguely aware of the bustle of a Suburban street not too far off. Just a few dozen yards.

And she was completely naked.

Naturally.


	3. Words

Being naked in a New York alleyway, with cars bustling along not twenty yards away, wasn't really all that fun.

Kitty was as kinky as the next mutant, having super powers inevitably found its way into the bedroom. How could it not? She could just phase out of her clothes, and had a boyfriend who could control the temperature. It was going to happen one way or another. This, on the other hand, was unpleasant and disconcerting. The people of the 1970's didn't need to see every inch of her bafflingly pale skin on display. Psylocke had shown enough skin for her and the rest of the girls on the team combined.

Uneasily, she rose to her feet, pavement rough on the soles. The journey through time had left her joints wobbly and weakened.

In three short steps she'd phased into the closest wall. Thankfully the bricks here were several feet deep, so she had space to sit, and contemplated. Staying inside things like that was actually rather relaxing. Her molecules were buzzing as they circulated and recirculated through the solid matter. It made her feel alive.

A moment later, she stuck her head out of the wall, peering down the alley.

She'd have to find Logan, fast, and take stock of their situation.

He was nearby, that much she knew. There was a tingling in the back of her head that was more than a little Logan shaped.

Suddenly, the sounds of shouting and gunfire sounded from somewhere above her. These were punctuated by the sound of least one arm breaking, an agonized cry, and the thumps of knocked out bodies hitting the floor. Kitty sighed. There he was.

Roughly a minute later the man called Wolverine stepped out the front of the building, gazing in awe at his new surroundings. He looked the same as he always did, ridiculous hair spiked up in two points on each side of his head, grizzled jawline and intense eyes. The only thing new was the suede leather jacket and the boots.

"Hey Logan!" she called, though not loudly enough to draw unwanted attention.

Thankfully, the man's animal-keen hearing picked it up.

He looked at her for a moment confused, before his expression became one of bemusement.

"I'm gonna guess your clothes didn't come with you, kid," he said with a smirk.

"You'd guess right," Kitty replied, fighting the urge to punch that smirk off his smug face. "Clothes aren't really part of me, so I came out of the stream without 'em. Little help?"

He held up a thick finger, still smirking.

"One sec, kid."

Several secs later, he returned with an armful of clothes she could only describe as skankerific. A ridiculously tight, nearly open blouse, flimsy sandals, and a pair of cutoffs so short that she may as well be parading around in her undies.

"You were sleeping with some mobsters daughter or something, weren't you?" she asked dryly as she inspected the new garments. She'd have to find a proper bra at some point.

Logan shrugged.

"I think so. Don't quite remember this. Shit starts to blur together after a while, ya know? But hey," he reached into his pocket and brought out a rabbits foot charm, key dangling from one end. "Got lucky."

"We're gonna need it," she took a deep breath. God there was a lot to process here. May as well work through it. "Let's get going, it's what an hour to Westchester? We need to talk through things."

Before long the pair was riding down the streets in a sweet convertible. One they should probably return at some point considering ti belonged to the mob, but then again, what mob in their right mind would screw with a bunch of mutants…..unless they were mutants themselves. There had been quite a few mutant gangs in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, the sewer dwelling Morlocks being the by far the most numerous.

They'd been some of the first major slaughters for the Sentinels. Even with someone like Calypso looking after them, they hadn't stood a chance.

Kitty closed her eyes for a moment, letting the blurring shapes of passing building fall out of her sight.

It was hard to believe how normal things seemed in this time. Yes, the architecture was different, and peoples clothes were a variety of colors that had bled over from the society shaking sixties that had just passed, but still, things were too….normal. Was it really possible that the actions of one vengeance obsessed woman would send all of this plummeting towards Armageddon? That the final fate of two races depended on mending the friendship between two incredibly different yet equally stubborn men?

They were doomed if that were the case.

"What's on your mind, kid?" Logan asked.

Somehow he'd found himself a cigar. Because of course he had. The silvery smoke trailed from his lips in curling ribbons. Kitty would complain, but instead she just phased her nostrils out of corporeal form. That way she couldn't smell anything.

"I know that look, kiddo. Talk to me."

"This is it," she said after a long pause. "No more time jumps…. That part of my power is gone."

Like a muscle that had atrophied, the twinging, pulsing nerve in her brain that had facilitated going back in time had shriveled up and faded away, replaced only by the strange tugging sensation that helped her feel Logan's presence nearby.

"We won't need anymore jump," Logan said, reaching over and squeezing her shoulder. "We get this done, and everything's fixed."

She smiled a bit. He was lying through his animalistic teeth.

Hard as we would fight to see the mission through, he was as resigned to failure as she was. Fighting a war without any kind of hope would do that to you. All you could do was lie, push forward, and grasp at any sort of victory you could find.

"What do you know about Raven?" it was a question that needed to be asked. All she really knew about the blue shifter was about Mystique, and the few things she'd gleaned from conversations with either Kurt or the Professor. Her last days had been as Raven. The incredibly short amount of time she'd spent with the X-men after regaining her powers post "cure". Those days had ended in her sacrificial death.

"Not much," he admitted. "Never met Raven. Just the psycho she turned into."

"Didn't you meet the Professor about this time, though?" the Professor had mentioned that.

Logan snorted through his smoke cloud.

"Only technically. For about five seconds. Chuck and Erik were recruiting for the CIA, I think."

"Aaand you told 'em to take a hike."

"'Go fuck yourself.'" Logan laughed. "They just turned and walked away."

"Probably for the best. Who knows how bad the crisis in Cuba could have gone if you were there to mess it all up."

All Logan did was grunt in response. He let the steering wheel flow through his grip, turning the convertible down a steep boulevard that cut through the burgeoning forests of evergreen pines. Early morning sun rays just barely scraped the tops of trees, layering the street in ambient oranges and yellows.

"Any idea how we can convince Chuck to take down his sister….if necessary?"

That addendum was an acknowledgment of what they both knew. The Professor would want to save his sister, not stop her. They wanted the same thing, of course. Even Logan, and he had anough blood on his hands and beef with Mystique that if you'd asked years ago, he'd want to cut her fucking head off.

"We show him the truth," Kitty replied somberly.

She peered back out the window, orange draping her face. It was hard not to well on the lack of a pulse behind her brain. Her friend in the drivers seat gave off an ethereal blue glow in her eyes, the remnants of her powers that bound him to his body fifty years in the hypothetical future….a future she could never go back to.

The pulse was gone, but she could still feel the background radiation of time well enough.

When that went away completely, everything she ever loved would be truly erased. It was inevitable, it may as well have already happened. Yet she dreaded it with every fiber of her soul.

"We may have to bring Kurt into this." He'd have been born by now, maybe four years old at this point. "He'll be somewhere in Germany with his fosters, but bringing him up may help, especially if it's her brother who brings him up."

Logan took a breath, unleashing more smoke. He offered her the cigar. Cheap looking brown wrapping covered the tobacco. Nothing special, just a cheap, quick cigar that didn't take a lot of moolah to afford. Not a great first smoke.

"Want some of this, kid?"

She hesitated.

"Fuck it," her nerves could use the loosening.

He had the grace to not laugh in her face when she inevitable sputtered the fumes back up. She'd never smoked before, really. Unlike Wolverine, she lacked the healing factor for it to have no effect whatsoever on her lungs.

"What about Erik, then?" he asked.

"The Professor," she sputtered, laying the cigar in the ash tray between the seats an spitting at her feet. God that tasted awful. "Convince him, then help him convince Magneto." She paused. "Convince Magneto. That's a good one."

Time passed, and soon the shape of an isolated mansion on a hilltop came into view. The trees had been cleared for space on the grounds, and even from a mile away they could see the twisted, overgrown vines that had come to covered the walls and the front gate. No lights shone in the various windows on the upper floors. None of the bustling life signs that marked this as Xavier's school were there.

It was like returning to the house you'd grown up in, only to find it abandoned, empty, and desolate. The garden was reduced to a mangle of weeds, you're fathers old station wagon was a rusted ruin, and all signs of home had eroded away.

God, it was a depressing sight, even with the building still in good repair.

Hopefully, the one man who could maybe help was still inside.

**LINEBREAK**

Hank McCoy didn't know what to do with himself.

A glass syringe lay emptied on the side table to his right. Several drops dribbled out of the needle. The last, unused bits of the serum that allowed him to keep his human form.

He examined his arms, in awe of their fleshy, pink hues. Carefully, he readjusted his glasses.

They were far easier to wear without the tufts of blue fur that grew over his ears and face. Funnily enough, for all the strength and intelligence his mutation granted him, he still needed to wear corrective eyewear.

Charles's study was filled with mid-morning sunlight. The books on the shelves hadn't been touched in ages. Empty shot glasses were strewn about the coffee table, and the rank scents of alcohol were evident in the air. He tried his best to keep things tidy, most of the house was in order, but Charles had long ago stopped caring. He was upstairs, classical musing glaring, sounds of scratching vinyl echoing downward.

How had things gone downhill so very, very quickly?

For a while everything had been looking up. The school had started, and mutant children were slowly starting to trickle in. teachers like he and Alex found a place here, and the dream of mutant assimilation became a bigger and bigger possibility with each passing day. Then Vietnam happened. Charles opened his mind to the world, and something in their suffering had broken him.

Now he mainlined the serum far more than was healthy. Walking, but not thinking or feeling any longer.

Cerebro lay unused a mile underground.

The halls of the school were empty. Hope was gone.

Idly, Hank let himself think of better days. Those days were short, only a few months in which Charles, Erik and the others had all been together in these halls. The days before he'd pushed away a wonderful, beautiful woman who may have actually felt something for him, and traded away what might have been love for his own insecurities.

Insecurities he clung to even now.

Charles was half dead, Raven was gone, and Erik was in prison. Everyone else had been drafted, or had left.

There was so much left to live for, wasn't there?

He was shocked out of his contemplation by a rapping on the front door.

Intrigued, and shocked, he rose from his armchair and stepped into the entrance hall. Who the hell could that be? No one had come to that door in well over a year.

Opening the door revealed a short woman wearing a brown leather jacket over a thinly clothed chest. Beside her stood a stubbly man in long sleeves with slate colored eyes.

"Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters?" the woman chimed.

Hank lowered his eyes.

"Sorry," he said. "The school's clothed."

He swung the door shut resignedly. Before he could he turn all the way around, the woman stepped through the door, looking annoyed.

"Well that was rude, Doctor McCoy."

A tiny hand pushed the door open, letting the gruff man in.

"Thanks, kid." He took a deep gulp of air. "Yep. He's here. Chuck upstairs?" he pointed down the entrance hall.

"W-wait just a second-" Hank babbled, flustered. Clearly these people were mutants. Not an odd sight in thjese halls, but...what?

The man started towards the stairs, but Hank grabbed him by the shoulder. This didn't please his guest.

"Look here, Hank," he said, almost smiling. "You and I are gonna be good friends one day," then his fist came into contact with Hank's jaw, laying him flat on the ground. "You just don't know it yet."

The woman in the jacket groaned.

"We're here five seconds, and you've already decked someone. And it's someone we like, too...damn it Logan."

'Logan' shrugged.

"Happens."

The woman leaned down and helped him to his feet. Above them, the chandelier glittered in the little light that made it into the hall.

"Sorry about that, doc. The 'Wolverine' here has a temp-"

Hank barely stayed on his feet as she tumbled forward, clutching her head. Logan shoved him aside, kneeling beside her prone, writhing body.

"Kitty!" he cried, holding her shoulders.

Blue glowed in her eyes, and, clearly not of her own volition, words came out of her mouth.

"'A father lost to hunger, the temptation of control,'" she cried. The blue fizzled in her eyes, and it glowed around the man, very, very faintly. "'No sentiment he represents can tame her savage soul.'"

Her head banged against the floor, and Charles came toddling down the stares, gaping.

**LINEBREAK**

Black leather boots perched daintily on the low glass table. Their owner narrowed her eyes, reading the next line in a book on Feminist Theory.

Focusing would be far easier were it not for the rhythmic, repeating sound of a ping pong ball bouncing back and forth across a table. A flash of movement moved along with the ball, catching it with a paddle each and every time.

Wanda sighed.

"Do you really have to do that now?" she asked.

The flashing stopped and suddenly her brother stood there, grinning like an idiot. Twelve yards away the ball bounced against the nearest wall. Stacks of pilfered televisions and box after box of assorted sweets stood there. A testament to her his hobbies.

"What?" he asked.

Instinctively, her eyes rolled skyward.

Pietro acted about as sensible as he dressed. Tight jeans, those stupid goggles, a silvery, platinum colored jacket. No wonder he spent his all his time stealing whatever wasn't nailed down...or the occasional bauble for her.

Adjusting her legs made the half dozen anklets that adorned them jingle festively For the most part, these were the only things covering her legs. She wore a skirt that came only down the mid thigh, exposing what their mother thought was a scandalous amount of creamy flesh.

Whatever. Magda said the same thing about the cut of her top. She could dress however she liked.

And she really did enjoy wearing Pietro's presents.

They were like that, the two of them. The only people she really paid any mind, and the only people he ever slowed down for were each other, their adorable little sister Lorna, and mom.

Family was all that mattered to them.

Family was who kept Pietro out of jail, and Pietro was the one who held her during her fits. The images that screamed and clawed at her mind seemed almost distant when she was safe in his arms. Things around her didn't change when he was there, when she was in control.

"Some of us are trying to read," she said, uncrossing and recrossing her legs, anklets jangling.

Pietro shrugged, still grinning.

"You read too much anyway."

Faster than she could blink he was back at his game. Sometimes she marveled at how much that tiny plastic ball could endure. Surely the friction would wear it to dust, right.

In vain she tried to return to her reading, but the words all blurred together with the repeating 'plink' sound.

Dropping the book, she decided to play hard ball.

Midair the ball frozen, surrounded by a swirl of red energy. Comparable only to a miniature cloud of interweaving scarlet light.

Wanda smirked, hand raised, content to stare at her brother's dumbfounded expression. With a twist of the finger, the ball crumpled inward on itself.

"You're getting faster," he said, sounding impressed.

"Thank you, brother dear," her smirk widened. Another finger movement tossed the ball away.

"You're quite welcome."

In a flash he'd moved to sit on the couch beside her, leaned lazily against her frame.

She smiled.

This was her most comfortable place in the world. Here, beside her favorite person, the 'gift' that tormented her was lessened significantly. She didn't loose control. She was happy.

Naturally, it was in this position that everything went spectacularly wrong in a single moment.

Red light burned across her vision, escaping from between her fingers and coming to swarm around her like a group of enormous scarlet colored eels.

Her body writhed and twitched, a scream came roaring out of her mouth, but Wanda didn't even notice. Pietro's frantic yells, her mother and little Lorna coming running down into the basement to check on her, she perceived none of that.

All that existed to her were the images.

_A woman rising high into the air as those who loved her gazed on in horror. Fire wreathed her form, a gargantuan, flaming bird painting the sky above her._

_Pietro, older, garbed not in his jacket and goggles but in a sleek black battle suit streaked with white. Above him towered a shifting titan, with fire in it's mouth and no soul in it's eyes. _

Something had changed in the world. She knew that, somehow. that was her gift. She changed things. Made coins come out heads. Made an annoying boy peeking down her shirt fall flat on his face. Made the odd police officer suddenly forget her brothers transgressions.

Something had changed, and though she hadn't done it, she felt it.

And that brought images.

More came in a torrent of pain and screams.

_A pretty young woman with green hair, standing strong against a man in a flowing cape, and a menacing helmet. _

_Swirling__ sands in the desert, a dark form rising from their depths beside four horses that radiated pain and death and emptiness. _

_A dwarf of a men laying dead, shot in the head by blue assassin. _

_Another young women with brunette hair and a petite form. Strangely, she turned to Wanda. _

_"I begin at the end," her voice echoed hauntingly. "Time buckles, and time bends." _

Momentarily, Wanda came out of her trance. Her family stood stricken, unworried by the shattered appliances and ping pong table around them. Then, one last image came.

_Her, and the man in the helmet. Metal twisted in his palms, and he stepped closer. _

_They had the same eyes. _


	4. Waking

When Kitty rolled over on the fine wood flooring of the entrance hall, she felt like she'd been punched in the face, and was experiencing an absolutely soul crushing hangover. She'd had that experience before as a teenager, a few too many jello shots with some of the other girls followed by an altercation by an anti mutant asshole who got in a lucky shot and decked her across the nose, but this was far different.

Her mind still swam with images and words of nebulous meaning. Words forced out of her mouth without any consent from her, images of various destroyed cityscapes and burning fires.

Oh, and Wanda fucking Maximoff.

That couldn't mean anything good.

"Alright, kid?" Logan knelt beside her, firm hand on her shoulder. She couldn't have been out for more than a few minutes. Young Hank, who was adorably awkward even if it was strange to see him without all the blue fur.

"Yeah," she sat up, rubbing at her temples. "Turns out I'm still connected to the time stream, even if I can't navigate it."

It was the only explanation. All of what she'd seen had been tinged with blue. And glowing blue was a telltale sign that the transmutation of space time was taking place.

"Though I'm glad to see you're alright," a new voice said from somewhere to her left. "Would you be kind enough to explain what it is you're doing in my home?"

Kitty turned, and couldn't help but gasp.

A pale, tired looking man stood slumped against the base of the stairs. His hair was long, tangled and streaked with grease. Faint stench drifted off his clothes, the scents of pot smoke and liquor and lack of bathing.

The eye were familiar, though they held an apathetic intensity she'd never though this man capable of.

"Professor," she breathed.

Young Charles Xavier shook his head.

"There is no Professor here, I'm afraid," the words were bitter and clipped. "The school's been closed for months. You're mutants then? Hank tells me you walked right through my door. And attacked him." He turned a critical eye on Logan, whose knuckles were bulging with the bone extrusions just itching to burst free.

"No matter. You'll find no sanctuary here. And if you're done with you're epileptic fit, would you kindly get the hell out of my home?"

"...Wow," Kitty said, glancing at Logan. "No wonder you didn't give us many details. The great Professor X, a strung out, washed up...how are you walking, by the way? Is it the same reason you don't have your powers at this point? And why isn't Hank blue?"

With Logan's help she wobbled to her feet, nearly amused by the strange, bewildered looks the younger versions of her teachers were giving them.

"Get out of my house," Charles nearly seethed, spittle in his beard.

"Please," Hank said. Patching of blue fur started to creep their way up his arms. Three of his finger nails began extending into claws. The serum always started failing when things got tense, and anxiety kicked in. "Just leave."

"Not happening, bub," said Logan. "See, we were sent here."

"By who, then?" the not-Professor snapped. "Has the CIA corralled another group of freaks to exploit, and sent them grovelling for my help? Or has the KGB come for covert vengeance after being duped by Shaw?"

His fists were shaking, and with every syllable and movement he made it became more clear just how unhinged he was.

"Neither, actually," said Kitty, both diplomatically and just a bit chirpily. "You sent us...fifty years from now."

"We're from the future," Logan finished for her. His fingers were twitching for a smoke he didn't have.

Kitty saw the twinge in Charles's jawline, and the brow crawl up Hank's forehead. This was the scene that happened in act one of every sci-fi movie that ever involved time travel, from Terminator to Back to the Future to Twelve Monkeys. The moment of skepticism in which the time traveler had to convince their acquaintances they were legit and not the raving lunatics they undoubtly looked like.

Well, since she couldn't just open her mind and show the usually high-powered telepath the future, she'd just have to go for the most sensitive nerve he had. Even if it made this young Charles really not like her.

"It's about Raven, Professor. You're sister."

The bearded man frozen on the stairs. Hank's mouth snapped shut.

Slowly, Charles turned, eyes blazing.

"How do you know that name?"

"We've met her more than a few times, for one thing," said Logan. "Not the greatest visits, let me tell you. And I go toe to toe with Victor Creed on a regular basis."

"Have you heard about the peace summit in Paris next week? The negotiations for the end of the conflict in Vietnam? Well one of the attendees is a man called Bolivar Trask."

"Trask?" queried Hank, adjusting his glasses. Two of the claws had receded back into fingers. "The weapons contractor."

"Yep," said Kitty. Though weapons contractor was a mild term for the creator of the Sentinels. "He's building a weapon. A weapon deisgned to kill mutants. They can track the x-gene, unload enough ammo in a minute to kill a hundred of us."

"Raven found out about it," Logan continued, as if they'd rehearsed. They hadn't obviously, but it was helpful. "So she'd been tracking him."

"A week from now," Kitty picked up. "She finds him at the summit, and kills him. One shot at point blank range. Congress had shot down his program, but his assassination convinced them otherwise. They capture Raven, torture her, hijack her DNA..."

Logan took a step forward.

"Her power is transformation. With the data they get from her cells, the weapon, the Sentinels, became adaptable to fight any mutant power. Fifty years from now, there's nothing we can do to stop them. Mutants are on the brink of extinction. Hell, so are humans. That's why you sent us back."

His stare lasted a good thirty seconds. Yet the apathy in his demeanor prevailed. Kitty could see it even as it happened. He shook his head, then truned as if to walk back up the stairs. They'd lost him.

"Leave, please. Whatever nonsense it is you're bringing to me, I'm not interested."

Three steps later, and Kitty blurted the only thing she could think of.

"You have a nephew." Charles frozen, but didn't turn. "Christopher's Church in Munich. Three or four years ago a blue baby that looked like a demon was left on the steps. Yellow eyes, pointed ear...a tail."

Without a word he stepped down from the stairs and moved towards the study. From a little alcove he pulled a bottle of scotch, which he pulled open. A finger gesture told the pair of time travelers they were free to follow.

It was a start at least.

"You alright?" he whispered. She nodded. "You dipped into the time stream? What did you see?"

"The Scarlet Witch," she said. "As if this wasn't complicated enough."

**LINEBREAK**

"I'm fine, mom," Wanda insisted weakly as Magda dabbed at her forehead with a damp cloth.

Of course, that was a blatant lie. After her fits she was the exact opposite of okay. The pictures that burned themselves onto mind took days to fade completely. On occasion her eyes would roll in unexpected directions, and the pictures would become twice as clear. And red light would sometimes crackle around her fingers.

She lay half sitting up in bed, hair dripping and skin damp.

After she'd become at least partially lucid, her mother and sister had helped her to the shower. The cold water had helped little to alleviate the heat that radiated off her.

Apart from a light bathrobe draped over her body, she was completely naked. That actually did help with the heat, though she wished she could shirk it off and cover herself in ice. She'd never cared about modesty. A long standing complaint of Magda's was that she showed off far too much skin.

Within the confines of the house, that sometimes meant all of it.

It was her body, and lounging naked was comfortable and liberating...at home anyway She really hoped Lorna didn't pick up the when she got older. Showing off her own body was one thing, her little sister was another.

Said little sister sat beside her in the usual bright pink tutu, with dirty blonde hair pulled up into a weird up-do that looked positively adorable on a seven year old.

"Lay still," Magda insisted in a no nonsense voice that sill managed to be concerned.

Years as a single homemaker, and an adolescence spent as a prisoner of the Nazi war machine had tempered her into a steel flint of a woman. How else did she manage two hellion teenagers with supernatural powers?

"Lay still!" Lorna parroted when Wanda tried for the tenth time to sit up.

Pietro snorted from his place on the floor.

"Should probably go ahead and listen to 'em." He had a comforting hand on her knee. He was worried, yet the mischievous glint that permanently filled his eyes was still there. That was why she loved him so much. He was the levity to her bone cracking cynicism.

"I will," she said tiredly. "Just need my sketchpad."

In barely noticeable blur Pietro disappeared and returned with an open pad of drawing paper. Lorna giggled. She always loved watching them use their powers. Maybe one days she'd get them to. They'd been just a bit older when they'd started showing signs.

"Thanks," said Wanda, flicking through the pages.

She wasn't an artist. Not even close, but she always liked to record the things she saw during her fits. They were so clear in her mind that she could recreate them exactly. And she'd never received so many as she had today.

"You should relax sweetheart," said Magda. "She reached for the pad, but it was quickly pulled away.

"Later," Wanda turned to her sister. "Lorna, can you bring me your crayons? I need some color for this."

"Sure," the little girl set of to get them, skirts bouncing. A moment later the coffee table was covered in mix of dark and pastel colors. Wanda pressed a kiss to the little moppet's cheek.

"Thanks, sweetie."

Turning to a new page, she set to work.

Drawing with long broad strokes, a fiery bird encompassing the form of a redheaded woman began to take shape.

"I am fire," Wanda found herself muttering without realizing it. "Fire, and life incarnate."

She tossed the page to the floor and started again.

"Is that me?" Pietro asked as the next picture started.

It was him, standing before a monstrosity of a machine with a flaming mouth. A white streak bent down a black body suit, a stylized X on the back.

"He looks older," commented Magda. She'd never been sure what to make of these sorts of visions. She was Romani, but knew nothing magics or the arcane or the things stereotypicaly associated with her culture.

Wanda said nothing, and tossed the picture aside.

Next came to the brunette haired woman. She was young, maybe five or six years older than Wanda and her brother. Like the older Pietro, she wore a sleek black bodysuit with an X.

"Time buckles, and time bends."

What did that mean?

Was this a real person, or just projection of her power to change the fabric of the word around her? The question alone may the edges of the pad fizzle away in scarlet smoke. Did she have something to do with the fiery bird? With the words?

The last image was the one she was dreading.

A man in a terrifying helmet that curved slightly around the eyes. Around his shoulders flowed a cape. Behind him loomed an enormous, nearly phallic stone monument. Washington DC, from high above.

From his hands energy twisted, wrenching the metal of cars and lamp posts, lifting an enormous ring high into the air.

She had his eyes.

Wanda spun to face her mother.

"That's him, isn't it?" she jabbed at the picture with an index finger. The tightening of Magda's lips gave all the answer she need, yet she pressed on anyway. "You've mentioned your friend, the one who can control metal. He's our dad, isn't he? That's why we can do what we can do."

Lorna perked up at this, eyes widening. Pietro looked interested. The two of them had come to that conclusion before their sister had even been born.

"Who is he?" her brother asked quietly, pulling Lorna into his lap.

Rising, Magda paced to the window beside the television. Fingers tugged at the bangle adorned curtains, contemplative and distraught. Eyes to the floor, she turned back to them.

"...A man named Erik Lehnsherr. We met each other briefly in the German camps. He and his family were from Munich, Jews...none of his relatives made it out."

The trio of siblings remained silent, letting her pace about the room. She didn't try any form of denial. Wanda's visions, beyond understanding as they were, were near infallible. They were always important.

"...We ran into each other afterwards, seventeen years ago. He stayed with me for a few days, we became friends. Then he disappeared for a long while. We were never really a couple, never romantic with each other, though I did care for him."

"Why'd you never contact him, then?" Wanda asked bluntly. Of course, she'd noticed that their lives were completely devoid of a father figure.

"Because he's dangerous," Magda admitted. "Incredibly so...I've seen only a fraction of what he can do, and it terrifies me." She left out the part that _their _powers terrified her. Her love outshone that fear. "Then, about seven years, he came to me looking for help in the middle of the night, wounded and bleeding. The two of you were asleep."

"And that explains Lorna," Pietro said quietly.

Magda nodded.

Having heard all she needed, Wanda stood up, not caring that the robe fell away, leaving her completely naked. She strode towards her room.

"Put some clothes on the instance!" Magda snapped.

"I'm going to Washington. That's where he is, and where I might get answers for all the weird crap I've been seeing."

"He's too-"

"Dangerous?" Wanda quirked, hands on bare hips. "Well, then he should be stopped then, shouldn't he? Someone has to deal with the maniac you fucked." She stomped into her room, and returned dress in a skirt, blouse, and nearly knee high leather boots. "Pietro, you're taking me to Washington."

Hesitantly, gazing at his mother, the boy rose.

"We'll be back soon."

With that, Wanda moved towards the garage.

She needed answers, and this man who was aparrently her father, and maybe the brown haired girl, could give her answers to what the images meant, and what she could do.

"I begin at the end," she muttered to herself. "Time buckles, time bends..."


End file.
